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After the morning’s boat trip out to Islas Ballestas, Cath and I continued by car with our guide and driver to the Paracas National Park, a little further south. This is both a marine sanctuary and reserve protecting the alien desert environment that had been home to one of the early Peruvian cultures. Here there were […]

I think we made a good choice for today, both for where to go and with whom. It was just Cath and I on the full-day tour, with a company that uses its profits to support projects in the Lima slums, and yet its price was still cheaper than any of the other companies we […]

It was convenient to have the 12th of January occurring during our trip, as it meant that I didn’t have to get creative with a 12 of 12 theme. It was also, fortunately, a less “exciting” day, which means that it wasn’t too hard to restrict myself to only 12 shots.

Our South American program, as organised by the travel company, did not attempt to jam-pack everything and make us feel rushed. On our return from the Inca Trail we had another day-and-a-half in Cusco, which would have allowed for any delays on the trail (the rainy season is notorious for causing hold ups due to track […]

The morning tour with Cocaman had taken us around the lower part of the site, which was the hub for the city and had most of the significant buildings. In addition to the photos presented in the Pt 1 post, I took quite a few other photos of the less “important” structures, all of them so […]

Thanks to a leaky sleep mat I didn’t sleep all that well during the night but at least the weather was a bit better when we got up. The mist occasionally cleared to reveal blue skies and the snow-capped far mountain range associated with Mt Salkantay.

After lunch we headed uphill to Runkurakay Pass (S 13°13.6′ W 72°30.3′), which I felt was the hardest bit of the day. It’s almost as high as Warmi Wañusca (around 3950m), and there were sections of the track that were 1 in 2, with steep steps. It was slow hard going, especially in the wet.

The second day of the trek was one of the toughest days of walking I’ve ever done. In total, we climbed about 1500m (so, if you like, up Mt Wellington from sea level — and then some — using the steepest ways imaginable apart from actually climbing the vertical Organ Pipes, and with some oxygen deprivation […]